The present invention relates to novel compounds for inhibiting glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) and their use in regulating biological conditions mediated by GSK-3 activity and, more particularly, to the use of these compounds in the treatment of biological conditions such as type II diabetes, neurodegenerative disorders and diseases and affective disorders.
Protein kinases, the enzymes that phosphorylate protein substrates, are key players in the signaling of extracellular events to the cytoplasm and the nucleus, and take part in practically any event relating to the life and death of cells, including mitosis, differentiation and apoptosis. As such, protein kinases have long been favorable drug targets. However, since the activity of protein kinases is crucial to the well being of the cell, while their inhibition oftentimes leads to cell death, their use as drug targets is limited. Although cell death is a desirable effect for anticancer drugs, it is a major drawback for most other therapeutics.
Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3), a member of the protein kinases family, is a cytoplasmic proline-directed serine-threonine kinase that is involved in insulin signaling and metabolic regulation, as well as in Wnt signaling and the scheme of cell fate during embryonic development. Two similar isoforms of the enzyme, termed GSK-3α and GSK-3β, have been identified.
GSK-3 has long been considered as a favorable drug target among the protein kinase family since unlike other protein kinases, which are typically activated by signaling pathways, GSK-3 is normally activated in resting cells, and its activity is attenuated by the activation of certain signaling pathways such as those generated by the binding of insulin to its cell-surface receptor. Activation of the insulin receptor leads to the activation of protein kinase B (PKB, also called Akt), which in turn phosphorylates GSK-3, thereby inactivating it. The inhibition of GSK-3 presumably leads to the activation of glycogen synthesis. The intricate insulin-signaling pathway is further complicated by negative-feedback regulation of insulin signaling by GSK-3 itself, which phosphorylates insulin-receptor substrate-1 on serine residues (Eldar-Finkelman et al., 1997).
Therefore, synthetic GSK-3 inhibitors might mimic the action of certain hormones and growth factors, such as insulin, which use the GSK-3 pathway. In certain pathological situations, this scheme might permit the bypassing of a defective receptor, or another faulty component of the signaling machinery, such that the biological signal will take effect even when some upstream players of the signaling cascade are at fault, as in non-insulin-dependent type II diabetes.
The regulation of glycogen catabolism in cells is a critical biological function that involves a complex array of signaling elements, including the hormone insulin. Through a variety of mediators, insulin exerts its regulatory effect by increasing the synthesis of glycogen by glycogen synthase (GS). A key event in insulin action is the phosphorylation of insulin receptor substrates (IRS-1, IRS-2) on multiple-tyrosine residues, which results in simultaneous activation of several signaling components, including PI3 kinase (Myers et al, 1992)). Similarly, the activity of glycogen synthase is suppressed by its phosphorylation. There is a marked decrease in glycogen synthase activity and in glycogen levels in muscle of type II diabetes patients (Shulman et al., 1990).
One of the earliest changes associated with the onset of type II (non-insulin dependent) diabetes is insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is characterized by hyperinsulemia and hyperglycemia. Although the precise molecular mechanism underlying insulin resistance is unknown, defects in downstream components of the insulin signaling pathway are considered to be the cause.
Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is one of the downstream components of insulin signaling. It was found that high activity of GSK-3 impairs insulin action in intact cells, by phosphorylating the insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) serine residues (Eldar-Finkelman et al, 1997), and likewise, that increased GSK-3 activity expressed in cells results in suppression of glycogen synthase activity (Eldar-Finkelman et al, 1996). Further studies conducted in this respect uncovered that GSK-3 activity is significantly increased in epididymal fat tissue of diabetic mice (Eldar-Finkelman et al, 1999). Subsequently, increased GSK-3 activity was detected in skeletal muscle of type II diabetes patients (Nickoulina et al, 2000). Additional recent studies further established the role of GSK-3 in glycogen metabolism and insulin signaling (for review see, Eldar-Finkelman, 2002 Woodgett, 2001), thereby suggesting that the inhibition of GSK-3 activity may represent a way to increase insulin activity in vivo.
GSK-3 is also considered to be an important player in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. GSK-3 was identified as one of the kinases that phosphorylate tau, a microtubule-associated protein, which is responsible for the formation of paired helical filaments (PHF), an early characteristic of Alzheimer's disease. Apparently, abnormal hyperphosphorylation of tau is the cause for destabilization of microtubules and PHF formation. Despite the fact that several protein kinases were shown to promote phosphorylation of tau, it was found that only GSK-3 phosphorylation directly affected tau ability to promote microtubule self-assembly (Mandelkow et al., 1992; Mulot et al., 1995). Further evidence for the GSK-3 role in this respect came from studies of cells overexpressing GSK-3 and from transgenic mice that specifically expressed GSK-3 in brain. In both cases GSK-3 led to generation of the PHF like epitope tau (Lucas et al., 2001).
GSK-3 is further linked with Alzheimer's disease by its role in cell apoptosis. The fact that insulin is a survival factor of neurons and initiates its anti-apoptotic action through activation of PI3 kinase and PKB, suggested that GSK-3, which is negatively regulated by these signaling components, promotes neuronal apoptosis. Several studies have indeed confirmed this view, and showed that GSK-3 is critically important in life and death decision. Furthermore, its apoptotic function was shown to be independent of PI3 kinase. Overexpression of GSK-3 in PC12 cells caused apoptosis (Pap et al., 1998). Activation of GSK-3 in cerebellar granule neurons mediated migration and cell death (Tong et al., 2001). In human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells, over expression of GSK-3 facilitated stauroaporine-induced cell apoptosis (Bijur et al., 2000).
The relation between GSK-3 inhibition and the prevention of cells death has been further demonstrated by studies showing that expression of Frat1, a GSK-3 β inhibitor, was sufficient to rescue neurons from death induced by inhibition of PI3 kinase (Crowder et al., 2000).
Another implication of GSK-3 was detected in the context of affective disorders, i.e., bipolar disorders and manic depression. This linkage was based on the findings that lithium, a primary mood stabilizer frequently used in bipolar disease, is a strong and specific inhibitor of GSK-3 at the therapeutic concentration range used in clinics (Klein et al., 1996; Stambolic et al., 1996; Phiel et al., 2001). This discovery has led to a series of studies that were undertaken to determine if lithium could mimic loss of GSK-3 activity in cellular processes. Indeed, lithium was shown to cause activation of glycogen synthesis (Cheng et al., 1983), stabilization and accumulation of β-catenin (Stambolic et al., 1996), induction of axis duplication in Xenopus embryo (Klein et al., 1996), and protection of neuronal death (Bijur et al., 2000). Valproic acid, another commonly used mood stabilizer has also been found to be an effective GSK-3 inhibitor (Chen et al., 1999). Altogether, these studies indicated that GSK-3 is a major in vivo target of lithium and valproic acid and thus has important implications in novel therapeutic treatment of affective disorders.
One mechanism by which lithium and other GSK-3 inhibitors may act to treat bipolar disorder is to increase the survival of neurons subjected to aberrantly high levels of excitation induced by the neurotransmitter, glutamate (Nonaka et al., 1998). Glutamate-induced neuronal excitotoxicity is also believed to be a major cause of neurodegeneration associated with acute damage, such as in cerebral ischemia, traumatic brain injury and bacterial infection. Furthermore, it is believed that excessive glutamate signaling is a factor in the chronic neuronal damage seen in diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, AIDS associated dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (AML) and multiple sclerosis (MS) (Thomas, 1995).
Consequently, GSK-3 inhibitors are believed to be a useful treatment in these and other neurodegenerative disorders. Indeed, dysregulation of GSK-3 activity has been recently implicated in several CNS disorders and neurodegenerative diseases, including schizophrenia (Beasley et al., 2001), stroke, and Alzheimer's disease (AD) (Bhat and Budd, 2002; Lucas et al., 2001; Mandelkow et al., 1992).
In view of the wide implication of GSK-3 in various signaling pathways, development of specific inhibitors for GSK-3 is considered both promising and important regarding various therapeutic interventions as well as basic research.
As is mentioned above, some mood stabilizers were found to inhibit GSK-3. However, while the inhibition of GSK-3 both by lithium chloride (LiCl) (PCT International patent application WO 97/41854) and by purine inhibitors (PCT International patent application WO 98/16528) has been reported, these inhibitors are not specific for GSK-3. In fact, it was shown that these drugs affect multiple signaling pathways, and inhibit other cellular targets, such as inositol monophosphatase (IMpase) and histone deacetylases (Berridge et al., 1989).
Similarly, an engineered cAMP response element binding protein (CREB), a known substrate of GSK-3, has been described (Fiol et al, 1994), along with other potential GSK-3 peptide inhibitors (Fiol et al, 1990). However, these substrates also only nominally inhibit GSK-3 activity.
Other GSK-3 inhibitors were recently reported. Two structurally related small molecules SB-216763 and SB-415286 (Glaxo SmithKline Pharmaceutical) that specifically inhibited GSK-3 were developed and were shown to modulate glycogen metabolism and gene transcription as well as to protect against neuronal death induced by reduction in PI3 kinase activity (Cross et al., 2001; Coghlan et al., 2000). Another study indicated that Induribin, the active ingredient of the traditional Chinese medicine for chronic myelocytic leukemia, is a GSK-3 inhibitor. However, Indirubin also inhibits cyclic-dependent protein kinase-2 (CDK-2) (Damiens et al., 2001). These GSK-3 inhibitors are ATP competitive and were identified by high throughput screening of chemical libraries. It is generally accepted that a major drawback of ATP-competitive inhibitors is their limited specificity (Davies et al., 2000).
A general strategy for developing specific peptide and other GSK-3 inhibitors is reported in WO 01/49709 and in U.S. Pat. No. 6,780,625, by the present inventor, which are incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein. This general strategy is based on defining the structural features of a GSK-3 substrate, and developing GSK-3 inhibitors in accordance with these features. However, while these publications delineate these structural features and teach various short peptides that efficiently inhibit GSK-3 activity, they fail to teach the design and synthesis of small molecules that could serve as GSK-3 inhibitors. WO 2004/052414, by the present inventor, discloses that attaching a hydrophobic moiety to a terminus of a peptide GSK-3 inhibitor enhances its inhibition activity.
However, although peptides are intriguing drug targets, their use is oftentimes limited by, for example, biological instability, immunogenicity, poor capability to cross biological membranes such as cell membranes and the blood brain barrier (BBB), and the like.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, non-peptidic compounds for inhibiting GSK-3 activity, devoid of the above limitations.